


A Lot in Common

by InvincibleRodent



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Mass Effect 2, Pre-Suicide Mission, Scar Survey (trope)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 14:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6808516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InvincibleRodent/pseuds/InvincibleRodent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Garrus knows little about human anatomy, but Shepard's body is a battlefield, and he does know his way around war.</p><p>(Drabble-style, stream of consciousness fluff about Garrus exploring the scars that color one reborn Jane R. Shepard's upper body.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lot in Common

Garrus’ long fingers fluttered down the side of her neck. Here are her collarbones, her sternum, her ribs- there’s her trachea, her jugular, her lungs beneath; ribcage expanding with each inward breath and falling back in tune with the warm breeze ghosting the hard planes of his face.

She was alive. So painfully alive, he was hesitant to lay hands trained to kill on such a living creature- a creature warmer, softer than him, a creature built from flesh and skin and—… well. Metal, as of late, but who didn’t have unexpected pieces of metal in their bodies these days.

His hand skirted the the dark t-shirt before it would have slipped under the fabric and along the white stripes of scars; along the firm, flat planes of her belly. They gingerly brushed the band of the dark grey sports bra underneath, as if asking for approval, and she gave it with a silent nod and a twitch of a smile he more knew than saw.

He remembered the day she died. The panic, the chaos, the frantic eyes searching for anything in the sky… He remembered the moment when Joker dragged himself out of the escape pod alone, and he remembered straining his eyes to look inside, expecting her to emerge and throw her helmet with two bright flashes of fire red.

He remembered the hollow, empty feeling in his stomach when nobody came. The sight of Alenko’s knuckles turning a stark bone-white, the faraway, guilty look in the pilot’s eyes. He remembered feeling nothing, hearing nothing, as if his ears were still clogged by the blast.

Now, her arms rose obediently over her head as both pieces of clothing slid off her form, unceremonious, and crumpled on the floor behind her in a dark pile.

The turian’s fingers now ventured to trace the marks of the elastic around her ribcage and skim the underside of her breasts, feeling the weight against his palm, the heat of skin so fine that he could see the spiderwebs of off-blue veins underneath; the tendrils of the fascinating machine that kept her bright red blood pumping. And underneath those, all those, her heart was beating a calm, steady rhythm.

Everything about her was red. Her hair, her armor, her blood, the marks etched into her skin. Red, red, red.

He traced the corded muscle of her core, the dips and hollows in-between- his fingers skirted the waistband of her trousers and the protruding bones that bracketed the cradle of her hips; skin so alien, he barely dared touch it.

He had a vague memory of a big scar right here- one of the many that had disappeared with the ones they had gotten together, only to be replaced by a plethora of surgical scars, a collection spanning two long and painful years. The thick, white line in the middle of her sternum. The smaller, red mark a few inches under her collarbone. The barely noticeable bumps of her ribs. A web of lines striping her torso. Median sternotomy, thoracotomy, laparotomy scars. A nick for the pacemaker implant. Dark needle marks staining softness.

And down here are her intestines. Her stomach, her liver, her spleen. Her ovaries, and here, her womb, where human females carry their young before it is strong enough to survive on its own. Where they conceive, where they live, from whence they are born.

Garrus laid his palm over the expanse of her chest where he supposed resided her heart, and let his eyes slide shut, committing the feeling of that alien warmth to his memory. 

“See?” she said softly, and her hand casually traced the burns along his mandible, two calloused fingers dragging in a half-moon-shaped line that mirrored the curve of her smile on his mangled face. “We’ve a lot in common.”

He would have protested -her scars weren’t a disfigurement, they didn’t mark suffering but life, they were beautiful for they were the reason she was alive- but chose to say nothing. It would have been too… syrupy, for the casual air he had tried to put on. Instead, his fingers slipped lower to cup around one breast- a nipple pebbled by the cool air of the cabin pressed into his palm, alien but beautiful.

Just like in the vids.

These are the mammary glands, with which humans nurse their offspring, nestled in fat and skin. There should be nothing exciting about such a touch, but Shepard’s heartbeat still picked up, thrumming just a little faster against her ribs, as his two fingers pinched her nipple lightly.

She breathed his name- whether as a warning or an encouragement, he didn’t know, and possibly neither did she. Her eyes -irises a startling green ring around pupils blown impossibly wide- flit up to his face, and he felt her gaze tracing the scar, all the way from his chin to his temple, before it would have searched for his. Silent as the grave, the nameless grave they had erected in her memory.

“Yours are different,” he said finally, with words made more of breath than voice. “I just wasn’t… good, enough.”

“These scars are what made me into a bloody science project,” she shrugged, her shoulders barely twitching. One of her fingers now traced the leathery skin of the burn down his neck, but that patch of skin had long since grown numb to the touch. “They may mean that I’m alive, but yours is at least completely your own.” Finally she smiled, and her hand dropped, curled into a loose fist on the sheets beside her. “So let’s not debate which is worse and resurrect the mood, hm?”

“Right.” With rather a heavy heart still, Garrus flared his mandibles, and let his voice drop into those dangerous, low registers. “Now, where was I?”

**Author's Note:**

> I have a [a tumblr](http://www.weresquirrel.tumblr.com) , in case anyone is interested! :) Prompts and feedback are always welcome! <3


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